Women are expected to be “cool” about everything

Women have to be cool about bad communication. Cool about disappointment. Cool about being uncomfortable. Cool about men wasting their time. Cool about taking notes in meetings. Cool about suppressing their own needs so nobody has to feel guilty for failing to meet them.

And the punishment for not being cool is immediate. You become dramatic. Frigid. Difficult. Intense. Crazy. Too much.

Which is why, halfway through a date with a man who handed me a dog leash while double-fisting a Corona and a nicotine vape, I realized something strange:

I no longer cared about being cool to men.

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Over the last five months, I’ve gone on three dates. “Dates” is a strong word because they were really hookups timed around ovulation, but stick with me. At this point in my singlehood, it takes a lot to get me to leave the house. Unlike back in the day, when I went on so many dates that I had a spreadsheet to keep up with names.

Now I do a FaceTime screening call first. Anyone who tries to skip this step gets blocked immediately.

I joke that it’s a chance for us to see if we’ll like each other’s laughs, but really I’m studying them. How they hold a conversation. Whether they ask questions at all. Whether their eyes light up when I speak. Whether they immediately steer things toward sex or, worse, flash me something I didn’t ask to see.

So far, only three men have cleared the screening process in five months. Two out of three were great for what I wanted at the time.

This last one, though? Not so much.

During our FaceTime call, we laughed and one-upped each other on accomplishments. We talked astrology. He was a Pisces, I’m a Capricorn. We talked storytelling, career paths, how our lives felt less like ladders and more like trees constantly branching outward. I’d seen enough to convince me that this man was worth putting eyebrows on for.

Then, right before we hung up, he turned the phone to the side and said:

“Say hi to my mom!”

Excuse me?

She waved politely. He said he’d see me at six.

Maybe he was quirky. Maybe he and his mom were close. Maybe she knew I was a hookup. Either way, not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.

He told me we were meeting at a hidden bar on a floating dock in his neighborhood. “You won’t find it on Google Maps,” he said mysteriously. I dressed for a hipster speakeasy.

But when my Uber dropped me off and I followed his directions to the dock bar with the old pirate ship attached to it…it was less hipster speakeasy, and more old white people wine down Wednesday on the water. I stood near the entrance waiting for him when my phone buzzed.

“Running late. Outside with Ninja.”

No worries. As a pet owner, I understand the frustration of a dog refusing to pee when you’re trying to leave.

When he walked up to the bar entrance, he had a leash attached to a giant white fluffy dog in one hand and a can of Miller Lite in the other.

Now, normally, I would’ve tried to act cool. I’d already come this far, and making a thing out of it now wouldn’t be very chill of me, would it? Maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal. And let’s be honest, maybe I was just curious.

So I followed him and the dog into the open-air bar where he greeted the bartender like an old friend. I ordered a vodka soda. He ordered a Corona. We sat down and talked philosophy, work, the patriarchy, shame, politics, and everything in between.

I’d taken a small edible beforehand to calm my pre-date anxiety, and there were moments where I wanted to roll my eyes and others where I found myself smiling because, intellectually, I felt matched for once.

Then he mentioned that Joe Rogan was a close personal friend. Not as a joke. According to him, it was because of his influence that his buddy Joe had started walking back some of his support for Trump.

He described Rogan as “just some dumb guy who likes talking hypotheticals.”

I stared at him carefully, waiting for signs of sarcasm.

Nothing.

So I asked, calmly: “How old is Joe Rogan?”

He answered, “Forty-eight, I think.” (For the record, Joe Rogan is indeed 58, not 48.)

I nodded before saying, “I think when people say ‘you live and you learn,’ what they really mean is that growth takes time and experience. That the more time you’ve had on Earth, the higher my expectations of you become. A fifty-eight-year-old man with one of the largest media platforms in the world is not ‘just some dumb guy.’ Would you consider that maybe he understood his influence perfectly well and simply didn’t care?”

He paused.

“I just don’t think he’d be that greedy,” he said finally. “He’s just a guy.”

Bingo.

What fascinated me wasn’t even his defense of Rogan. It was how easily he minimized the actions of a grown man with enormous influence and decades of media experience. A man who helped normalize and platform dangerous rhetoric for years before quietly stepping back once the social consequences arrived.

And yet, somehow, I still wasn’t angry. I found myself… evaluating. This is new.

At some point, he stood up to get another beer (his fourth) and before walking away, he handed me the dog leash. Again.

As I picked white dog hair from my lip gloss, he chatted with the bartender while I sat alone in silence for several minutes thinking: I am absolutely not romantically attracted to this man.

But I was curious about him. And I did want to sleep with him. Would it be uncool of me to admit that those are two different things?

When he returned, I didn’t let him sit back down.

“Let’s get out of here.”

We walked back to his house while I talked about why I love my neighborhood. How it feels like a community. We have a group chat. We have collective rules about when to call the police and when not to. It reminded me of why I love Leith in Edinburgh, my favorite neighborhood in my second home city. History, community, culture, art.

Then we arrived at his house.

Built in 2002, it was a cookie-cutter townhouse that he had described like a sprawling architectural masterpiece. Instead, it looked like the set of a family sitcom from the 90s. Generic. Not bad, just deeply ordinary in a way that made me realize our definitions of eccentricity were wildly different.

The place was messy. Open closets overflowing with clothes. Shoes scattered across the floor.

He kept reassuring me that his “organizer” was coming over the next day.

“She’ll take care of that,” he said, gesturing toward the chaos.

As he gave me the tour, he repeatedly stopped in random rooms, threw his arms open, and yelled directly into my ear: “This is my HOUSE!”

After the second time, I finally put my hand up.

“You are being entirely too loud for this time of night.”

Oops. That wasn’t very cool of me.

What if he gets offended? What if he gets angry? What if he kicks me out? What if he hurts me? These are the calculations I’ve been conditioned to do in real time and it’s exhausting.

But he barely noticed. He just kept going.

Eventually we ended up in his bedroom where clothes and shoes covered the floor. He started kissing me and as I leaned backward, I said:

“I’m leaning more sexual than sensual right now.”

“Oh,” he replied immediately. “You like it rough?”

No. That is not what I said.

“I meant exactly what I said.”

And suddenly I became aware of something happening inside me all night long: Every few minutes I had been checking in with myself right before I’d usually top into the old territory of abandoning myself.

Do I still want to be here? Am I enjoying this? What do I want from this interaction now? What would make this night enjoyable for me?

Women are trained to do the opposite. We monitor everyone else first. Their comfort. Their ego. Their attraction. Their emotions. Their reactions. Meanwhile, our own needs become background noise.

But that night, I kept reweighing my needs without shame. And the answer kept changing.

I wasn’t romantically interested in him but I still wanted to have sex.
I liked parts of his mind but I disliked parts of his worldview.
I felt psychologically seen but I was physically annoyed.
I was bored but I was curious.

And instead of forcing myself into a single coherent emotional position to appear “cool,” I let all of it exist at once.

Back in my male-centered date spreadsheet days, I would’ve done whatever it took to seem chill. I would’ve suppressed my own needs for fear of seeming difficult - or worse, fear of losing the validation I was getting from a man choosing me, if even for the night.

This time, I reached for my purse vibrator. I told him exactly how he could help. I focused on my own experience first. I gave instructions without apologizing for them.

Who IS this woman?

He made no attempt to check in with me during. Didn’t recognize when I yelped in pain and kept repositioning until I finally gave up and just wanted to get it over with. After we were both satisfied, he lifted his arm and said, “Get in here,” inviting me onto his chest.

“I’m good,” I replied.

As he had been doing throughout the date, even during sex, he reached for his nicotine vape. At that point, I just laughed.

“Welp. This was fun.”

I ordered my Uber, got dressed, hugged him goodbye, and left.

When I got home, I texted him to let him know I made it safely because I’m not evil.

The next day he texted back: “We should do that again!”

I blocked him without a second thought. I didn’t owe him an explanation. Even back at home outside of his view and reach, I was still prioritizing myself.

The way my shoulders dropped felt like taking my bra off the minute I got home.

In real time, I stopped performing being cool. And every time I caught myself feeling secure in my needs, it was a self-reinforcing loop. I’d say “No thanks,” it would give me the confidence to do it again. And again, then again, and again.

For the first time in my life, I realized I did not have to impress this man. Or any man. He had to impress me.

And to be clear, if we all thought this way, I think romantic interactions would be that much more satisfying because we all give the time of day to the people whose needs match ours. But I digress. For now, I’m adjusting my FaceTime pre-screens to scan for men who introduce me to their moms before we’ve even met. That might have been a red flag. Maybe.